In this case it was the high tide line. The sea weed is a marker. Above the sand is dry and safe, below, the sand is wet. I found myself walking the high tide line, simply being in the physicality of experience.

That’s our current experience. Friday was my last day as Principal at Uniting College. All through the weekend we worked, preparing to shift. Bio-security laws are tough going into New Zealand, so the barbeque needs to be de-spidered, the tents cleaned. It will take six weeks for our stuff to be shipped, so there’s working out what we can fit into a suitcase that will be enough to live on – clothes, entertainment, books – for six weeks. There is a work office to declutter, deciding what paper needs to stay for the incoming Principal, what I want to take with me.

Today – Monday – the packers arrived and are with us until Wednesday. Thursday we fly, leaving Adelaide around 1 pm, arriving Christchurch late evening. Sunday we begin the drive to Dunedin, arriving Monday to take possession of the house.

We’re walking a zone of transition. We’re tired. We’re emotionally spent. All we can do is walk, step by step, decision by decision, box by box.

Friday, September 25, 2015

ministry + art + story: Living Libraries innovation

Living Libraries

BYO lunch and join Cogs Smith, Sil Hein and Linda Forsyth for a conversation about the Art of Pastoral Care. The artists will tell the stories behind their artwork, which will lead to a conversation about the intersection of art and pastoral care. This is the culmination of The Art of Pastoral Care Exhibition currently being shown in the Adelaide Theological Library. Tea and coffee available.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

My HERGA 2015 (Higher Education Research Group Adelaide) paper

I spoke at HERGA 2015 (Higher Education Research Group Adelaide) today. It was a well run, high quality event, from the free coffee cup and conference bag, to the excellent catering, to the range of intensity and passion brought to bear on education in higher education.

The room was packed for my presentation, although I think it was for the presentation after mine. Here is my spoken paper, titled – A class above: Evidence based action research into teaching that is connected, mobile and accessible in a higher education context

Keywords: flipped learning, e-learning, higher education

Introduction
The Brave New World of higher education faces an inherent conflict. Standardised frameworks encourage one-size fits all. At the same time, the student body is increasingly diversity.

In 2014, I participated in a Flinders University Community of Practice. The focus was on learning that is connective, mobile and personalised. I made changes to what was a core Bachelor of Theology topic. It had historically been taught in traditional ways that focused on the technical language of systematic approaches to the theology. I made 5 changes
• Changed assessment to expect student to student interaction outside the gathered lecture (connective)
• Placed all lecture content online (mobile)
• Introduced students to Blooms taxonomy as a theoretical frame to negotiate the change with students
• Shifted the contact time from lecturer-driven to student-choice of small group activities linked to Blooms taxonomy (personalised)
• Introduced indigenous voices to enhance diversity (illustrations on personalised)

This can be theorised using Garrison’s community of inquiry model, which argues that communities of inquiry are built using social, cognitive and teaching presence. Social presence requires me to cultivate within myself and the class effective communication and group cohesion (in this case via the change to the assessment). Cognitive presence involves, through exploration, assignment and evaluation, integration and confirmation of understanding (in this case through student choice group work and through indigenous voices). Teaching presence includes course design, facilitation and direction (in this case through the use both theoretically and pedagogically of Blooms taxonomy)

The Community of Practice sought learner feedback by asking the same four questions start, middle and end of our diverse topics. What are you most interested in learning? What resources will best support your learning? How valuable is it to have choice? What aspects of the topic are you concerned about (if at all)?

Results
At the start, students identified that they were most interested in the content of the subject – the theology of Jesus. They were excited about choice. Some had concerns, not in relation to “flipped learning” but with their ability to master the online technologies.

At the mid-point, three significant shifts had occurred in the class. First, students had moved from a 100% anticipation of content, to a 50% content and 50% consideration of how they were learning. This was evident in comments focused on the learning dynamic of the class and the diversity of their peers. Second, students felt supported in their learning by the resources and through the lecturer engagement (teaching presence). Third, choice continued to be seen as positive, in extending learning and enhancing motivation.

By the end of the course, the mid-point patterns remained. Student responses continued to indicated not only appreciation of content but also included reflection on how they were learning. The role of fellow students remained significant with the diversity of the class named as a significant factor in learning. (“It has helped me be able to see different points of view and helped me to realise that we all are able to “do” Christology from our own background.”) Choice continued to be seen as a positive. It was perceived to increased engagement and have a positive impact on learning. In analysing the responses linguistically, theology was not only being used as a word linked to content. It was also being used as a verb, a “doing,” an active, engaged process in which students participate, in contrast to what is contained in set texts. Students made links between personalisation, diversity and this “doing” of theology. (“Yes it has helped me to understand Jesus in a more relevant way for a 21st century setting.)

Discussion
Haythornthwaite and Andrews, E-learning Theory and Practice argue that students fill three roles in an on-line community.
• E-facilitators provide interim summaries and influence the trajectory of the discussion.
• Braiders reinterpret the online debate in different styles.
• Accomplished fellows take initiatives that invite participants to explore a subject in more depth.

This provides a way to theorise my data. Take this introduction to a final assignment by one student. “I … was inspired by the presentations of [two indigenous church ministers] …. This stemmed from the group activity, where … I was asked by one of my classmates to connect liberation theology to my culture.” Using Haythornthwaite and Andrews’s theoretical categories, the learning begins because of two accomplished fellows (two indigenous church ministers). Challenge came from the group activity, in which a classmate (not the lecturer) acts as both a facilitator, influencing the discussion and a braider, re-interpreting lecture material during a group discussion and inviting a different style, in this case of application.

Haythornthwaite and Andrews also argue that e-learning is “an inextricably social act.” It increases connection with the local, as “learning gets re-embedded.” It expects a greater focus on “learner agency.”

“In conventional learning and scholarship, there is an authoritative, hierarchical power system at work. The teacher acts as mediator for the student between the body of knowledge … In e-learning the canonical texts are themselves committed to digital format and thus become at once more malleable, more open to critique … The ‘voice(s)’ of the original author can be placed alongside the student voice or voices. The learning process becomes … more democratic .. less hieararchical.” (E-learning Theory and Practice, 57-8)

This is certainly consistent with my data. Teaching theology involves engagement with significant texts – including the Gospels, to the Christological debates of the Early Church, the challenges of modernity and post-colonial critiques. For an individual student to engage a lecturer in a traditional lecture setting requires speaking in front of their peers, with the expectation of being knowledge in front of a more experienced academic. However, if engagement with lecture material and readings is shifted to group activities, students have space to process among peers.

This makes sense of the student assignment. It is one thing for a lecturer to ask a student to apply what this means. There is a different weight altogether when a student asks their peer to “connect [their] own culture and Christ.” In this moment, another student has become the “learner agency” that invites a “re-embedding in new local environments.”

Conclusion
My research is a limited sample – of one class in one semester. But it provides evidence that the use of teaching that is mobile, accessible and connective reshapes the student learning experience. Flipped learning enhances student agency and increases appreciation for diversity among the student cohort. It can turn the entire student cohort into teachers, inhabiting different roles in the “conditions” of learning. In other words, students as well as teachers are essential to the learning processes.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

backpacking transitions

Lindisfarne was a great place to process transition. I asked the taxi to drop me off early so that I could walk in. With a heavy back pack, the act of taking it off when I sat down for lunch became a rich bodily reminder of what I am processing. I am taking off the Principal “back pack.” As I do, a certain level of weight and responsibility is removed.

Yet I’m still me, with or without back pack. I am still graced by God, bound by family relationships, gifted with certain insights. It was a rich insight to realise that I am still vital, still loved, despite the demands of the Principal placement over the last three years.

There was great joy over the rest of the day, walking back pack free, enjoying being me.

During the second day, the backpack was worn constantly. This was partly reality, that I had no where to store it. But I could have asked the pub where I was staying. I chose not too. The task of this day was to look ahead, to begin to hear God for this next season. That required the back pack on, for it is in the middle of things that God speaks.

Carrying a back pack produces initial soreness of muscle. But over time, the body will harden. This is encouragement for the next season. In a few weeks, having taken one back pack off, I will put on another one. It was helpful to realise that the initial days of new responsibility are in one sense a temporary soreness.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

spirituality of transitions: Lindisfarne

Today I head to Lindisfarne, Holy Island. It has a rich and deep spiritual history. I went there in 2012 for a time of retreat at a number of significant life junctures. I was in a process of call to be Principal of Uniting College. So the time on Lindisfarne was important in terms of prayer and reflection.

On Holy Island, I encountered another transition. Here is what I wrote -

Inside the church, St Marys, I came across my fathers death. A lifesize sculpture, four men carrying a coffin stands inside the door. It is black, carved in stone. Cold, enduring. It is a confronting moment, facing death. Enclosed within ancient stone walls, it makes the church feel like a tomb.

The moment was more confronting, for my father’s name is Cuthbert. Entering that church, in that retreat of transition, I faced the reality that one day, I would carry my father’s coffin.

So, some four years later, I am returning. I’m wanting to place myself again in that rich and deep history. I go expecting to be prayerful about the ending of one season of being Principal (at Uniting College) and the start of another (at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership). I go expecting to honour my father, whose name is Cuthbert and to be glad of his ordinary saintliness in my life.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Last Cab to Darwin: a theological meditation on outback place

Monthly I publish a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 90 plus films later, here is the review for September 2015, of Australian film, Last Cab to Darwin.

Last Cab to Darwin
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

Last Cab to Darwin is a visual introduction to contemporary Australian stereotypes. Indigenous men drink and fight. White fella Australians drink and fumble emotionally. English women tourists are blondes willing to sleep around.

Death strides into the midst of these caricatures. Rex (Michael Caton), a taxi driver from Broken Hill, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. With three months to live and afraid of hospitals, he hears of Dr Farmer (Jacki Weaver), advocating in the Northern Territory of Australia for the right to euthanise.

Last Cab to Darwin is based on a true story, including the gaps in Australian law between Territory, State and Federal parliaments. It offers the potential to dwell in complexity. The reality is that the road trip genre becomes an excuse to speed past rich cultural complexity.

Driving his cab to find Dr Farmer, Rex encounters Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), who proceeds to fight and drink his way with Rex toward Darwin. Their narrative journey is broken by a set of clichés, including watches that stop, feral cats hung from outback trees and Tilly’s salvation through sport, if he can beat the bottle. Speeding toward yet another stereotypical scene (Darwin sunsets), Tilly has a one night stand with English barmaid, Julie (Emma Hamilton), who wraps herself into their journey. These images, of indigenous men, white fella Australians and blonde English women tourists simplify the complexity that could ennoble Australia today.

I refer to the lens through which the outback is viewed. The desert landscape depicted in Last Cab to Darwin is simply a dusty red backdrop through which visitors pass, collecting experiences on a road to somewhere. There is no sense of another story, of “anhangha idla ngukanandhakai,” the indigenous (Adnyamathanha) understanding of living in memory.

This understanding of outback is beautifully depicted in the recently published Yarta Wandatha. It is a rarity, a theology book with colour photographs of outback landscape. Unlike Last Cab to Darwin, these scenes are never backdrop on a trip to somewhere. Rather, each is story, around which memory is wrapped. Interpreted in Yarta Wandatha by indigenous woman Denise Champion in creative dialogue with the Christian story, we find the unfolding of a very different outback story.

Last Cab to Darwin introduces two indigenous women. Polly (Ningali Lawford) is Rex’s neighbor, having an affair they are both scared to make public. Sally (Leah Purcell) is Tilly’s wife. The movie provides stereotypical similarities of these indigenous woman. Both are abandoned by their menfolk. Both approach conflict by shouting angrily at those they love.

Such is the simplicity of stereotype. In contrast, when Denise Champion tells the story of Awi-irtanha, the Rain Bird, we encounter a more complex story, in which indigenous resources, considered in light of Jesus, avoid the ugly consequences of unresolved conflict.

Watching Last Cab to Darwin I kept waiting for the road trip to engage these stories on the road between Broken Hill and Darwin. The only hint is when Tilly locates Sally’s mob as fighters against colonial invasion. Once again, 40,000 years of rich and storied memory is lost, replaced by the stereotypes of recent arrival.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is becoming of Knox College for Ministry and Leadership, Dunedin. He is the author of The Out of Bounds Church? (Zondervan, 2005) and writes widely in areas of theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Built for change: Innovation and collaboration in leadership book contract

I was delighted last week to sign a book contract with Mediacom for what will be my second book, tentatively titled “Built for change: innovation and collaboration in leadership.”

It will be a book about innovation. There are many books of theory about innovation and many books from overseas about leadership. (Hence I deliberately sought out a local ie Australasian publisher). I want to write a book that emerges from a context of reality, from a real life situation of change. (Mainly the last three years as Principal of Uniting College). I want to provide some practical stories of change and then consider them, first with the wisdom of hindsight, second with the theological probing that is the gift of the Christian tradition.

I hope the book offers an understanding of change that is both practical and possible, in ways that celebrate collaboration, enhance equality and make access possible.

It is a project I’ve been mulling over for the last few months. My first days writing in June is described here. As I processed the shape of the project over two days in July with my supervisor, I asked myself “Why write?.”

Please join us afterwards in the College Common Space for drinks and nibbles from 4pm-5:30pm, where there will be the chance to say farewell to Steve, Lynne and Kaylee, to hear some words of thanks and enjoy a glass of wine or juice and some local cheeses.